How to be a customer service trainer

Training is an essential part of building service culture. Employees must know what to do and how to do it. This article for three people.

One is a customer service rep who wants to train others. Another is a full-time trainer who wants to develop their customer service training skills. The third is a customer service leader.

All of these people are customer service trainers. Their shared mission is to help employees build skills to serve customers at the highest level.

I'm going to share three things all customer service trainers have in common. Plus, a resource to get you started.

Expertise

You have to be good at customer service to train others.

A trainer must be able to demonstrate what good service looks like, explain it clearly, and be seen by participants as a credible source.

• Customer service reps earn the ability to train through great service.
• Trainers describe and demonstrate service skills in a lesson.
• Leaders model customer service skills to set a positive example.

🤔 How do you build your customer service skills?

Here are three great options:

1️⃣ Serve customers. Experience is the best teacher. Serve as many customers as you can. Learn from them. Experiment with different approaches. Try like heck to do better the next time.

2️⃣ Find a mentor. Hopefully, you have a boss you can learn from. If not, find a coworker who sets a great example and can give you feedback.

3️⃣ Content. Newsletters, training videos, and books can all help—but only if you're ready to apply what you discover and try new skills. Here are a few resources:

• Free weekly tips: Customer Service Tip of the Week
• Training videos: LinkedIn Learning courses
• Books: Check out some of my favs

⚠️ Should you take a workshop? Only if it meets two conditions:

1. It will give you skills you need
2. You can put those skills to use right away

The skills you learn in any workshop are "use it or lose it." If you don't use what you learn right away, you'll quickly forget.

Informal Training Skills

Most trainers start informally. This includes giving an informal tutorial, being a subject matter expert, or conducting on-the-job training.

Has a coworker ever asked you how to do something? Helping them complete a task is informal training.

My first training opportunity came when I worked at a retail store and my boss asked me to help train a new employee. I tried to show him the specific skills I used to serve customers every day. He quickly caught on, and I loved it.

You can do the same thing.

• Customer service reps: show a coworker one of your service secrets.
• Trainers: share best practices one-on-one.
• Leaders: coach your employees to help them improve service.

However you build your informal skills, keep your focus on the goal: helping others serve customers better.

Formal Training skills

You can increase your impact as a customer service trainer by building formal training skills. These skills will help you design, deliver, and evaluate training.

Formal learning skills include:

• Applying adult learning principles
• Conducting a needs analysis
• Designing impactful training
• Facilitating effectively
• Measuring learning impact

Here are three ways to build these skills:

Create a personal development plan. Use the Individual Development Plan worksheet as a guide. It will help you assess the gap between the skills you have and the skills you need. Bonus: the ability to do a gap analysis is a core skill every trainer should have.

Take a train-the-trainer course. If you have access to LinkedIn Learning, try How to Design and Develop Training Programs.

Subscribe to Service Training Tips. This weekly newsletter provides one customer service training tip per week. You'll also get access to a monthly Q&A call. Subscribe here.

Conclusion

Follow this plan to build your customer service training skills. This works whether you are a rep who wants to become a trainer, a trainer already, or a customer service leader.

1. Become an expert
2. Build informal skills
3. Learn formal skills

Service Culture Resources

Here are some additional resources to help you build your service culture:

1. Conversation. Follow me on LinkedIn where I post daily (M-F) about service culture.
2. Training. Join 161,998 professionals who have taken Leading a Customer-Centric Culture on LinkedIn Learning.
3. Guidebook. Get a step-by-step guide from The Service Culture Handbook.